Gartner: BI Market To Reach $2.5 Billion This Year

New license revenue in the worldwide business intelligence software market will hit $2.5 billion in 2006, an increase of 6.2 percent over last year, according to research firm Gartner.

The Stamford, Conn.-based firm further projects ongoing growth through 2009, when license revenue is expected to reach $3 billion. The findings, based on a Gartner survey of 1,400 CIOs, indicate that business intelligence has surpassed security as the top technology priority this year.

Businesses are trying to gain more meaningful insights from the growing data volumes generated by ERP, customer relationship management systems, human resources tools and other applications. Gartner says companies have bought more than $40 billion worth of such technology, which produces reams of operational data, over the last few years.

"Moving forward, BI will become part of business innovation itself," said Gartner research vice president Frank Buytendijk in a statement. "Sharing information with customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders increases loyalty and in many industries provides competitive differentiation. BI will become pervasive in operational and workplace applications as organizations seek to optimize their business."

Impediments to successful BI deployments remain, however. Limited BI skills, combined with a perceived high total cost of ownership and difficulty quantifying direct business benefits continue to hamper business intelligence adoption, Gartner says.